The hitherto unstoppable director is calling this his final theatrical feature as he contemplates early retirement at age 50, capping a remarkable film career that began in 1989 with sex, lies and videotape.

Normally this might imply exhaustion, and a movie without much energy or purpose. On the contrary, Side Effects is a cracking thriller that ranks among Soderbergh’s best, featuring electric performances by Rooney Mara, Jude Law, Catherine Zeta-Jones and Channing Tatum.

You may see it referred to elsewhere as a “psychological thriller,” and there are mind games in there worthy of Polanski, Hitchcock or De Palma. But there’s no need to qualify the ride guided by Soderbergh, who once again also does his own cinematography and editing under the pseudonyms Peter Andrews and Mary Ann Bernard.

There’s an almost documentary focus in Side Effects on the antidepressant pills that give the title part of its meaning, which screenwriter Scott Z. Burns (who previously penned Soderbergh’s Contagion and The Informant!) roots in medical fact, headline intensity and narrative briskness.

The over-prescribing of drugs such as Zoloft, Prozac and Wellbutrin is a growing concern, with fears being expressed by medical, legal and social authorities that these powerful chemicals are creating a dangerously zombified citizenry.

The medical alert message certainly comes through. But it’s clear from the suspenseful opening depiction of a blood-spattered New York apartment kitchen that this is no mere public service announcement.

Rewind three months, and Soderbergh’s voyeuristic lens focuses on Rooney Mara’s Emily Taylor, 28, who has the big fearful eyes of a Tim Burton creation. Her money-man husband Martin is just getting out of jail, where he’s been for the past four years on an insider-trading rap.

Their happy reunion is muted by Emily’s continuing anxiety, which threatens to submerge her. Never fear, drugs are here, delivered via the pink pill of a new antidepressant called Ablixa, prescribed by kindly psychiatrist Dr. Jonathan Banks (Jude Law).

Banks is an ambitious man, one who isn’t averse to accepting cash from Big Pharma when a new drug needs testing. He doesn’t need any convincing about the benefits of antidepressants. He administers them to his own wife (Vinessa Shaw), telling her they’ll “just make it easier to be who you are.”

The good doctor genuinely cares about his patients, going so far as to make a personal visit to Emily’s former therapist, Dr. Victoria Siebel (Catherine Zeta-Jones).

Siebel looks over her severe black eyeglasses at Banks and considers that yes, it might be good for Emily to have a man as a therapist, and also for her to start taking Ablixa.

Ablixa is supposed to have calmer side effects than other drugs Emily has tried, but the product is not as advertised. She develops a raging sex drive, which Martin enjoys, but also a propensity to sleepwalk, which he doesn’t. At this point it’s best to abruptly end the plot summary, but that’s in keeping with the twitchy nature of the film, which keeps us on edge as to what might happen.

Whatever you go in thinking about Side Effects, you’re not likely to leave the theatre with those same thoughts. Especially after the story jumps down an entirely different rabbit hole, and then another, and the medical, legal and moral morass of the chemical culture is fully brought to bear.

This is the fourth straight genre picture Soderbergh has directed in just over two years, following Contagion, Haywire and Magic Mike as he has profitably dallied in the multiplex on his professed way out of theatrical filmmaking (there’s still TV for him, including his upcoming Liberace biopic).

It’s a shame to see Soderbergh leave filmmaking when he’s on such a roll. But he’s leaving us a lot to remember him by, not least of all being Side Effects.